See you in a week!

I'd love your thoughts on this....writing this soon....I'll update here with more thoughts but wanted to leave this as bread on the waters for the early risers...I know, I know, spam, but that can be routed around with business models and contracts...I've been noodling this for a long time and am close to saying SOMETHING....more background here (on Yahoo's search monkey) and here (when Amazon did it and no one seemed to notice...)...

My Mac FAILED. After downloading a new OS (560 MBS!!!!) Rummaged around and found a four year old OSX disc...and MAGIC. It worked!

But wrong on this site. The magic was truly ... magic. I booted off the CD I found, it checked the web, downloaded the right version of the OS again, and after about 25 minutes of downloading and busy bee-ing, the damn thing booted up as if nothing had happened. This after my Mac was literally DEAD. FAILED.

I am so happy. Then again. What the fuck, Steve Jobs? What if I didn't know about how do to this? Oh, I hate to love you so much, Macintosh.

I had to honor to work with Clay Felker for a few years, making magazines and websites as part of my time at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He was in poor health for much of the time we worked together, but never lost his fire or his commitment to the core thesis of a great publication: Voice, Point of View, and Quality. He viewed great magazines as conversations, much of my own theories around FM owe a direct debt to conversations I had with Clay on topics of publishing, the Internet, and business models.

His legacy will live on and multiply in the work of the thousands he hired, worked with, and edited.

I say "apparently" because I can't find any actual Google press release on the subject. It was blogounced, apparenty: Announced on Performics' blog, and possibly a few key blogs, like TC and a few others, were told about it, or possibly they just noticed that all of a sudden, Google had a page for the "Google Affiliate Network." Look, I love blogs, but we're not that good.

Interestingly, Danny at SEL has not weighed in. He'd be the first one I'd want to hear from if there was really news, given his deep understanding of the search-driven affiliate marketplace, which quite honestly is fascinating, but a saddled with the kind of kharmic weirdness often associated with the domain industry. (They are kissing cousins, in a way...)

Anyway, there's probably no official Google release because, as far as I can tell, there's nothing to talk about. This is a very quiet trial balloon. There's not word one about anything that might actually change in the Performics blog post. Well, OK, there's this:

Within the next couple of weeks you will see some exciting changes to the user interface reflecting the new brand.

To call this a new coat of paint would be to overstate the facts.

Now, were it to decide it wanted to, could Google change the affiliate marketplace in ways untold? Heck yes, it could. Is it? Nope. Not yet anyway.

After taking several days to digest the news, the digital media world has reached the conclusion that the launch of Google’s new media planning product isn’t likely to bring upheaval to the Web metrics business. And it probably doesn’t represent the feared first step towards total advertising—and ultimately world—domination by the search giant either.....

“They need to add so many things, it’s not even a consideration at this point,” said David Smith, CEO, Mediasmith, who pointed out that Ad Planner lacks deep demographic data and a reach/frequency function. “It’s absolutely not ready for prime time.”

True for now, but don't get comfy thinking that version 1 of this product is going to be the last version...knowing David, I bet he's watching this pretty closely.

Update: Yep, David sure is paying attention, here's his story on Ad Planner in today's Mediapost.

So why did I leave?

There are many things about Google that are not great, and merit improvement. There are plenty of silly politics, underperformance, inefficiencies and ineffectiveness, and things that are plain stupid. I will not write about these things here because they are immaterial. I did not leave because of them. No company has achieved the status of the perfect workplace, and no one ever will.

I left because Microsoft turned out to be the right place for me.

First, I love multiple aspects of the software development process. I like engineering, but I love the business aspects no less. I can't write code for the sake of the technology alone - I need to know that the code is useful for others, and the only way to measure the usefulness is by the amount of money that the people are willing to part with to have access to my work.

Sorry open source fanatics, your world is not for me!

Google software business is divided between producing the "eye candy" - web properties that are designed to amuse and attract people - and the infrastructure required to support them.

As someone who has, in a minor key, been through really tough times as the head of an organization that is failing, I really empathize with the leaders at Yahoo. But I completely empathize with the employees, who, in a market that is, honestly, pretty shitty, can only hold on and try to laugh a little. From the note:

As for the Google deal, HOORRAY! Now, you might be thinking that we employees - particularly those in Search - who have spent most of our waking hours trying to do battle with Google might in some way be disappointed that we are now getting into bed with the enemy. Au contraire! We love it! Nothing indicates a job well done better than outsourcing your own job to the competition. Am I right, or am I right?

Well, on the web, distribution is a sort of different deal. Some will argue it's key, others will say search has obviated the economics of distribution.

I think the answer is somewhere in the middle. Sure, if you have great content, search and the force of many will find it, and eventually you will end up with a Boing Boing, or an Ask a Ninja, or a Dooce or a Mashable.

But if you are from Old Hollywood, you don't want to wait for the force of many to find and validate you. Instead, you want to push your product, which you presume, because you are a beknighted Force of Hollywood, that the masses will want to see. (Gee, Mike Myers, how's that working out for you?)

So what to do?

Well, you could pay someone for distribution - Yahoo, Myspace, and AOL come to mind. Or...you could strike a deal with Google, and distribute your show through the Adsense network, which has wicked huge reach.

Yep, you read that right. I've written about this before, but the deal written up in the NYT today is probably the most high profile example yet. From the piece:

Google is experimenting with a new method of distributing original material on the Web, and some Hollywood film financiers are betting millions that the company will succeed.
In September, Seth MacFarlane, creator of “Family Guy” on television, will unveil a carefully guarded new project called “Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy.” Unlike “Family Guy,” which is broadcast on Fox, this animation series will appear exclusively on the Internet.
The innovative part involves the distribution plan. Google will syndicate the program using its AdSense advertising system to thousands of Web sites that are predetermined to be gathering spots for Mr. MacFarlane’s target audience, typically young men. Instead of placing a static ad on a Web page, Google will place a “Cavalcade” video clip.

My prediction, and I could be entirely wrong here: This will fail utterly. Why do I predict this? Two reasons. One, context is everything. Until Google acts like a publisher, and works with sites specifically to place advertising that is relevant to them and integrated, Adsense is an afterthought to those sites. And second, the web is not organized top down. It's organized bottoms up. Distribution is not something you use to push shit AT people, it's something that happens when people organize TOWARD something. That's the whole point of the web, ain't it?

Now, the new "Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy" show could work no matter what, if it's good. If it's good, folks will want it, and they'll click on the Google ads, as well as find it through the collective hivemind that is always created in real time around good stuff. Folks will claim the Google experiment was a hit, and start to mimic it.

But it's NEVER about distribution on the Web. It's ALWAYS about quality. The next time Google tries this, if they are not working with a hit, it will fail.